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Mandatory Breakfast

A while back, the Mild Girlfriend and some of her friends wanted to go to a sunrise ceremony on Alcatraz. The problem, however, was that they all lived far enough away that they'd have to drive a fair bit just to get there. This was a sunrise ceremony, so they would've had to arrive at the crack of dawn. This sounded appealing to very few of them, so instead, they decided to crash nearby. Specifically, they crashed with us.

I should also mention that both the Mild Girlfriend and her crew had occasionally lamented that they didn't have access to good restaurants. Well, that was a problem that I could remedy. I don't know all of the newest, hippest spots in town, but I can certainly point people to decent food. So, we went out to dinner at one of these spots the night before. Put it this way: one of them asked if she could have her birthday dinner AND her graduating-from-college dinner there. I figure we did all right with the selection.

Now, the other bit of pertinent information is that my mom is nothing if not a gracious host. She, like many other brown mothers, is almost insistent that people be fed. As kids, we were under strict orders to have a proper breakfast before leaving the house. It wasn't a fancy breakfast, but it was breakfast nevertheless. My siblings and I all left the house having eaten at least a glass of milk and some toast.

So, she applied the same logic to her house guests. We had some home-made bread from the bread machine, and there were plenty of options for milk of some sort. Normally, she would have insisted on waking up to prepare breakfast for the house guests herself. However, everyone was planning on leaving much, much earlier than she would be up. So, she improvised: she pulled all of the guests into the kitchen, and showed them where everything was. To really drive the point home, she flat out told everyone that she'd be upset if they didn't eat something before leaving the house (again, brown mothers are kind of awesome like that).

As the Mild Girlfriend would later point out, my mom was the shortest person in the room. She had nothing but sheer force of will backing her as she looked up at everyone. Still, she looked every last one of these people dead in the eye and used a tone of voice laced with a conviction that I'm not sure I could match.

And, oh, did it work. The very next morning, long before my mom would be awake, everyone dutifully marched into the kitchen and had breakfast. Remember, my mom wasn't actually awake, and there was little to no chance that someone would get caught if they didn't eat. Still, every last person, myself included, had breakfast (habits die hard). The kicker to all of this was a comment made by one said guest, "I'm not even hungry. I'm still stuffed from last night. I'm just eating so I don't upset [my mom]."

Everyone cracked up at the moment, but I'm still laughing about it all these weeks later. I'm telling you, my mom has magic powers.

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